1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a method for printing data and an ink jet printer using the same, and more particularly to a method for printing data and an ink jet printer using the same to increase the speed of printing the data.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the progress of the technology, a printer has gradually become an important image output apparatus in the daily life of the modern human beings. The low price and the excellent printing quality of the ink jet printer have made the ink jet printer become the most popularized computer image output apparatus.
FIG. 1 (Prior Art) is a block diagram showing a conventional ink jet printer 100. The ink jet printer 100 includes a paper feeding device 102, a printing system controller 104, a carrier 106, a phase encoder 108, an ink jet driving circuit 110 and a print head 112. The paper feeding device 102 moves the sheet. The print head 112 is substantially disposed on the carrier 106. When the carrier 106 is moved, the phase encoder 108 generates corresponding phase signals A and B to record the position of the carrier 106.
The printing system controller 104 receives to-be-printed data from an external host 114, and outputs the to-be-printed data corresponding to a predetermined position to the print head 112 when the carrier 106 is moved to the predetermined position. FIG. 2 (Prior Art) shows waveforms of phase signals generated by the phase encoder 108 of FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 2, when the carrier 106 is moved to the predetermined positions N, N+1, N+2 . . . , in which the phase signal A or B changes, the printing system controller 104 outputs the corresponding data to be printed.
FIG. 3 (Prior Art) is a circuit diagram showing the ink jet driving circuit 110 and the print head 112 of FIG. 1. Referring to FIG. 3, the ink jet driving circuit 110 includes a power supply 1102, a control logic block 1104, a P-line driver 1106 and an A-line driver 1108. The power supply 1102 provides operation voltages for the P-line driver 1106 and the A-line driver 1108. The control logic block 1104 outputs multiple control signals PLOAD and PENABLE, a clock signal PCLK, a black data signal PDATAB and a color data signal PDATAC to the P-line driver 1106, and the control logic block 1104 outputs a control signal AENABLE to the A-line driver 1108.
The print head 112 includes a black jet 1121 and a color jet 1122 each having multiple heaters. The control logic block 1104 outputs a first enable signal P_select_B to control the black jet 1121 and outputs a second enable signal P_select_C to control the color jet 1122. Multiple P signals P1 to Pn outputted from the P-line driver 1106 and multiple A signals A1 to Am outputted from the A-line driver 1108 respectively control the heaters to jet an ink drop to print the data.
FIG. 4 (Prior Art) shows timings for the ink jet driving circuit 110 and the print head 112 in FIG. 3. As shown in FIG. 4, the control signal AENABLE controls the A signals, the control signal PENABLE controls the P signals, and the black data signal PDATAB and the color data signal PDATAC respectively transfer black data and color data corresponding to the to-be-printed data. The clock signal PCLK sequentially inputs the data to the shift register (not shown) of the ink jet driving circuit 110, and the control signal PLOAD loads the data to an output terminal of the ink jet driving circuit 110 to wait for the control signal PENABLE to enable the P signals. In addition, the first enable signal P_select_B and the second enable signal P_select_C respectively control whether the P signals in the black jet 1121 and the color jet 1122 are enabled.
The signals outputted from the ink jet driving circuit 110 to the print head 112 include the signals A1 to Am, and can control m×n×2 heaters in total. The signals “A” are enabled in the order from A1 to Am, while the P signals can be enabled or disabled simultaneously. This means that when the first enable signal P_select_B enables the P signals of the black jet 1121, n heaters controlled by the signal A1 in the black jet 1121 simultaneously receive the energy to jet the ink drop first, then n heaters controlled by the signal A2 receive the energy to jet the ink drop, and finally n heaters controlled by the signal Am receive the energy to jet the ink drop. When the second enable signal P_select_C enables the P signals of the color jet 1122, n heaters controlled by the signal A1 in the color jet 1122 simultaneously receive the energy to jet the ink drop first, then n heaters controlled by the signal A2 receive the energy to jet the ink drop, and finally n heaters controlled by the signal Am receive the energy to jet the ink drop.
According to the conventional method for printing the data and the ink jet printer using the same, when the print head 112 is located at a predetermined position N, the black data, which is transferred by the data signal PDATAB and corresponds to the predetermined position N, is usually printed first, and then the color data, which is transferred by the data signal PDATAC and corresponds to the predetermined position N+1, is printed. The printing operations are repeated in a similar manner until a swath of data is completely printed. Then, the next swath of data can be printed. As shown in FIG. 4, however, a rear half of the time in which the print head 112 is moved from the predetermined position N to the predetermined position N+1, is not utilized so that the time resource is wasted and the data printing speed cannot be optimized.